At the annual CSU conference on Service Learning, 9/30-10/1/99
in Los Angeles, campus directors of Service Learning in the CSU
were charged with creating proposals, including budgets, that respond
to Governor Davis call for community service as a graduation
requirement for all CA public universities and colleges. The proposals
were to be submitted to the campus Academic Senates who would send
recommendations to the statewide Academic Senate and also were to
be submitted to the Chancellors office to be collated with
the other campus responses for an integrated CSU response. At CSUSM,
this document written by Lynda Gaynor, Director of the OCSL, was
accepted by the Academic Senate on November 10, 1999 for inclusion
with the recommendations of its own task force which were then forwarded
to the statewide Academic Senate.

* * *

The practice of service dignifies a civilized society. Developing
an appreciation of community needs, and developing civic engagement
and a service ethic are valid goals of higher education. However,
we wish to be on record as advocating for the encouragement of VOLUNTARY
rather than mandatory community service. This is a matter of principle.
It is also a matter of pragmatics. It would be extraordinarily difficult
to create and monitor huge numbers of truly educational community
service experiences for students and it is of questionable usefulness
to inundate a community with huge numbers of short-term, untrained
volunteers. There are many ways that an appreciation of voluntary
community service can be developed in higher education through adequate
incentives and creative exposure to the community. There are many
reasons to believe that service that is embraced willingly will
leave a more positive legacy in the future lives of the students
and in the community. That said, we shall address the task as charged.

Assumptions: The actual number of service hours proposed
is unknown, but for this discussion, I will assume 36 hours; the
number could be 30 or 48 or something else. In fact, it would be
difficult for community organizations to make use of volunteers
for even this little time, let alone less, and it is not likely
that a much greater number of hours would be proposed.

It would be likely that there would be some articulation with the
community colleges service requirement, but it is also possible
that university graduates would have a second requirement.

Since this is too unknown at this point, I will assume for our
discussion that all CSUSM students would complete the service requirement
at CSUSM. It is proposed that the requirement would

be phased in beginning with the freshman class in the Fall, 2000
and so the full impact on university resources would not be felt
immediately. For purposes of these calculations, I will assume 1000
students per year in community service, although with our projected
growth this number would rapidly.

OPTION I:Independent Community Service

This option is possible theoretically, so it is being presented;
however, it has not been well received among faculty because it
is questionable educationally, questionable in community benefit,
and a drain on University resources.

Many students already do volunteer service on their own or through
organizations to which they belong, and other students can be directed
to do likewise. With this option, the University forgoes interest
in influencing the learning outcomes that occur during the community
service, although learning outcomes may certainly occur. The University
also largely forgoes responsibility for the nature of the impact
on the community of the students community activity; we must
be aware that students can have positive or negative impacts
on people they try to "help". To meet the requirements, students
could use community service activities in which they are already
engaged, find projects on their own, or independently consult the
database on the Office of Service Learning website. There would
be no tuition and no academic credit. Students would have a project
representative sign off for their hours on a timesheet. If desired,
there could be a simple Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory checklist evaluation
from the project representative that could accompany the time sheet
(with a minimum level of satisfactory responses required), or there
might be no evaluation at all. Risk management procedures somewhat
like those currently used for Service-Learning courses could be
used, or not. Students make their own arrangements for what they
want to do with their service time, within whatever basic limitations
the University might set.

BUDGET: This option has the lowest budget but that
does not take into account the "cost" of lost potential
learning or of possible negative impact on the community of student
activity. Also, the cost is entirely absorbed by the University
since there is no tuition/FTE's produced. The estimated cost of
this option for 1000 students per year:

3 CA II FTE to handle risk management forms, if used,
verify students service hours, transmit verification to Admissions
& Records and enter on transcript records, and maintain a database
of volunteer opportunities, ideally with student evaluations of
the learning value of the volunteer opportunities. (Figures based
on annual salary of $25,164 & benefits of $9,284)

$103,344 3 CA II FTE

17,224 .5 Community Service Coordinator

Operating Expenses

$120,968 TOTAL

Plus 6% for University growth and 3% inflation/yr annually for
the next 2 yrs.

$131,855 FY: 2000-01

$143,722 FY: 2001-02

QUESTIONS TO BE ADDRESSED: There would be many questions
to be answered. It should be noted that some of these questions
also would have to be addressed in the other options presented.

Could students' service to the University community be counted
toward the requirement (i.e., student peer counselors, students
who work on the new student orientations or on the Pride or in
ASI?)

Could volunteer participation in partisan political activities
be counted toward the community service requirement?

Could participation in the activities of a specific religious
organization be counted toward the requirement (i.e., teaching
Sunday school, singing in a church choir, doing childcare for
adults to attend religious services)?

Could services to specific relatives, friends, or selected neighbors
be allowable for meeting the requirement (i.e., mowing the lawn
for an aunt, washing a neighbors car, coaching a neighborhood
children's athletic team)?

Could activities performed on behalf of a For-Profit business
enterprise be counted toward the community service requirement?

If the student receives a stipend or is paid for the work, can
it be considered community service? (Our America Reads students
are given work-study stipends for their tutoring activities in
the K-12 schools.) What about paid internships? What if a financial
contribution/payment is made directly to the college/university?

With appropriate documentation, can previously completed volunteer
service be counted toward the requirement? If so, how far back?

Must the 36 hours occur in one project/setting, or can it be
pieced together from a variety of smaller activities? (The nature
of the learning is impacted by this decision.)

What is the fiscal, programmatic, and staffing impact on a small
community organization of large numbers of volunteers who require
project planning, supervision, integration into the organization,
and possible coordination with the University?

How would students deal with the emotional discomforts or with
confrontations to their values or

attitudes that can result from what they encounter in their
community experience? What about defusing reactions that could
lead to destructive interactions with community members?

Would the settings in which students do their service take liability/responsibility
for students' actions or injury? Would the University be responsible?

Who would handle the complaints that inevitably occur (from
students, from service organizations, etc.)?

OPTION II:Community Service Class

This option involves a regularly meeting class (2/3 credit hours),
possibly meeting on alternating weeks, throughout the semester,
with more or less regular weekly community service time, say, a
minimum of 3 hours/week for 12 weeks within a single site/project,
or a meaningful combination of sites focussed on the same issue.
Course would carry tuition, be for academic credit with either a
letter grade or CR/NC. Potentially, it could be incorporated into
General Education as part of the GEL (Lifelong Learning) course.
Course readings and discussion and written assignments would focus
on the problem area to which the students service is related,
community needs and issues (social, educational, environmental,
political, health) in general, issues involved in creating change,
being an engaged citizen, and in the nature and philosophy of service
itself. Ongoing reflection would be expected and is a hallmark of
such a course (through written work, class discussion, or other
creative means). The student would also receive ongoing feedback
from the instructor (and possibly from other students) on their
reflections from which they can grow in their understanding of the
issues they face in the service placement and of their own reactions.

Community service placements would be arranged collaboratively
by the student and the instructor and the community project with
the help of a placement coordinator using an expanded version of
the database of the Office of Community Service Learning. The same
risk management procedures as apply to our current Service Learning
courses would apply. The quality of student learning is greatly
enhanced when the course instructor has a good understanding of
the placement sites and when good coordination with the site supervisor
is maintained and site visits by instructors would be encouraged.
Instructors might therefore limit their students' selection of placements
to a number that the instructor can reasonably have the time to
coordinate. The site supervisors input might be used in the
final course evaluation of the student, along with the instructors.

When students do community service and participate in the "real
world", particularly "worlds" with which they are not already
familiar, they are exposed to the complicated dilemmas of the world.
Their values, attitudes, and previous life experiences may be significantly
challenged by what they experience, and indeed, this is one of the
sources of learning inherent in community service. The class meetings
would support the students in dealing with their personal reactions
to what they encounter in the community, allow students to reflect
on their own attitudes and values, explore unconsidered alternatives,
and assist in defusing reactions that could lead to destructive
interactions with community members if left unattended. Instructors,
with consultation from a Community Service Coordinator or the Director
of Community Service Learning or other appropriate person, would
be responsible for troubleshooting problems between the student
and the field. Classes would need to be sized for responsible monitoring
of the students' performance. (Class size is unknown but just for
purposes of some budget estimates the number 25 is being used.)
Students reflections would be expected to go beyond the reporting
of experiences and their personal reactions to them. Reflections
would be evaluated with respect to the deepening of students' understanding
of the complex issues with which they are working and their ability
to integrate the content of the course readings and lectures with
their field experience.

Clearly, this kind of course is unlike most other academic courses
and will require more development than can be described here. However,
there are people experienced with this type of course and this type
of teaching, and their consultation is important in the responsible
development of the course. If a 36-hour community service requirement
were met through a 2-credit course in classes of 25, for an instructor
to monitor students service work, it would take 40 sections
to meet the needs of 1000 students each year. This could mean the
equivalent of 5 full time faculty capable of doing this type of
teaching. Another option would be to use 10 part-time Teaching Associates
(if we have access to people with the background and necessary skills),
with the Teaching Associates supervised by a part-time senior faculty
member experienced with the content issues and process skills germane
to the course. Conceivably, a 500 level course could be developed
for this group of T.A.s to develop their knowledge of community
service learning, and their skills in-group process teaching and
other skills demanded their role. The faculty member could be attached
to the Office of Community Service Learning or be part of the duties
of the Director of the OCSL (assuming an expanded time base).

BUDGET: This option brings resources (tuition/FTEs) to the
University but requires a re-allocation of total resources.

Plus 6% for university growth and 3% for inflation annually for
2 years

$499,282 FY: 2000-01

$544,217 FY: 2001-02

QUESTIONS TO BE ADDRESSED:

Would this course be attached to an existing program or stand
alone as its own program?

If a discipline does a Service-Learning course that includes
in-class time dealing with equivalent issues, could it substitute
for this community service course? Or could some of the sections
of this community service course be tied to specific discipline
Service-Learning courses to accomplish the same purpose?

How would such a course be classified in the Course Classification
system (i.e., lecture, lab, field, etc.)?

Is there a pool of qualified faculty/teaching assistants for
this course?

Also, see many of the questions under Option I.

OPTION III: Discipline-Based Service Learning

This option builds on our present structure but would require a
more consistent definition of what constitutes a Community Service-Learning
course. There may be faculty who would want to continue making use
of some "real world" activity as part of the learning in their courses,
but not wish to meet all the factors necessary to be a designated
Service-Learning course. The use of Option III would require that
there be enough faculty interested in doing this discipline-based
community service type of teaching to consistently mount 40 Service-Learning
courses per year spread throughout the curriculum (for 1000 students).
Also, in the case of many disciplines, in order to cover the required
academic material and also produce a high quality Service-Learning
experience with time for adequate student reflection and faculty
feedback, it would be wise to pursue an additional credit hour for
the course (for both faculty and students). The additional credit
hour would allow both for the community service time and for additional
regular (not necessarily weekly) class meetings for reflection,
and for responsibly dealing with the kinds of reactions that arise
during service work in order to improve the chances of the students'
learning experience being a positive one. The reflection assignments
would be expected to go beyond a reporting of experiences and personal
reactions and demonstrate the integration of the field experience
with the academic course content (or in the case of some internship
courses, the academic content of previous related courses). It is
possible that the service activity could be structured so that it
was spread over a series of courses in a particular discipline in
a planned integrated way and then the total number of service hours
would be divided among the series of courses.

A commonly accepted definition of Service-Learning courses includes:

A given number of community service hours (in this case, 36)
dealing with real community needs as defined by the community.

Ongoing reflection on the experience

Ongoing feedback on the reflection

Demonstration of mastery of the academic course content

Demonstration of the ability to integrate the academic content
with the community experience.

Attention to increasing students' understanding of the nature
of engaged

citizenship, the process of creating change, and the philosophy
of service

itself.

It should be noted, that, with the exception of some socio-psychological
and Humanistic/process education faculty, university faculty are
experts in their discipline fields of study and do not necessarily
consider themselves experts in exploring students' feelings, attitudes,
and values or in managing the group dynamics of a classroom situation
in which personal reactions are in themselves the material through
which learning is to occur. Students, especially those working with
populations or in situations for which their personal backgrounds
have not prepared them, can have strong emotional reactions to experiences
that can occur during community service and they can experience
confrontation with their own values. This is in fact part of the
learning opportunity available in the Service-Learning experience,
but facilitating this process so that it can have a positive outcome
for students and for the community, may not be something for which
many faculty would feel prepared.

In this option, therefore, it would be important to build in many
supports for faculty: Opportunities for ongoing learning, relevant
conference attendance, on-campus faculty development opportunities,
and a faculty member with expertise in the dynamics of such teaching
available as a consultant to faculty in their expanded roles. This
faculty member could be attached to the Office of Community Service
Learning, or this function could be part of the job description
of the Director of OCSL if the time base were to be expanded. Faculty
would also need more help with community placement arrangements
than is currently available through OCSL. Another support to faculty
might be a 1-credit or mini-course in which some basic groundwork
is laid before entering the Community Service-Learning class. This
mini-course could deal with some of the issues that were discussed
under Option II's Community Service course to provide an initial
orientation so that the regular academic service-learning faculty
could assume a foundation on which to build. Such a course could
be a segment of Area E of General Education taken before or concurrently
with a discipline-based service-learning course and be a preparation
for community activity. Conceivably discipline based service-learning
faculty themselves might pass through a similar orientation in order
to have a shared foundation with their future students.

BUDGET:

$108,922 2 Faculty FTE (due to additional credit hours to SL
courses)

27,245 .5 Faculty FTE, Faculty Service Learning Development

103,344 3 CAII

103,344 3 Placement Coordinators

150,000 Faculty Development

1,000 Resource Library

1,200 Local Travel

Operating Expenses

2,200 Printing Service Learning Guides

2,000 Community Partners Education/Support

$499,755 TOTAL

l

Plus 6% for university growth and 3% for inflation annually for
2 years

$544,733 FY: 2000-01

$593,759 FY: 2001-02

QUESTIONS TO BE ADDRESSED:

Would sufficient faculty commit to teaching Service-Learning
courses?

Could a fourth credit (for courses presently 3 credits) be achieved?

Also, see many of the questions under Option I.

OPTION IV: Combination of Options II and III

This option would not require as much additional staff as Option
II (fewer class sections could be offered) nor as many qualified
service learning courses as in Option III, because students could
choose to do their community service requirement through one path
or the other.